Louise Closser Hale

Biography
by Hal Erickson

Befitting her triple-barreled name, actress Louise Closser Hale was regularly cast as domineering society matrons. Just as regularly, she was cast as a British aristocrat, and never mind that she actually hailed from Chicago. After a long stage career, Hale came to films at the dawn of the talkie era, co-starring with fellow Broadway veterans Edward G. Robinson and Claudette Colbert in Hole in the Wall. Hale was never more imperious or intimidating than when recreating her stage role of the "monster mom" in the filmization of Rose Franken's Another Language (1933). Not long after completing this picture, Louise Closser Hale died at age 60, as a result of injuries sustained in an accident.